Professor Michael Morris:

What the proposed Act misses around carbon dioxide, because, mainly, it is looking for storage, is that carbon dioxide, as I said in my opening address, is an immature technology to invest in and cutting prices per tonne of carbon dioxide in a carbon capture and storage, or carbon capture alone, is working out at somewhere between €100 and €200 a tonne. If it links, as I said here, into abating some of the emissions from the cement industry, it will add 50% onto the cost of a bag of cement. Those are foreseen prices by 2030. That is a problem.

What it does not call out, and a couple of my colleagues alluded to this, both for hydrogen and for biofuels, is the opportunity for making something from carbon dioxide. Hydrogen plus carbon dioxide is the way industries made all their chemicals for the past 150 years and yet that has not been considered in this at all. It is all about capturing it and storing it and negating the value you have spent on this whereas there is a growing industry in making chemicals from carbon dioxide that is captured. That is one of the things that is really missing from this proposal.